Local comedy legend Jason Manford has just added a tonne of new tour dates to his 2025 UK tour, and when we say a TONNE, we mean a big metric mega-tonne of them.
To be honest, there are so many he might as well be doing a whole extra tour and a half.
Jason already had plenty of gigs scheduled all throughout the year but now the Salford-born comic, presenter and all-round performer will be pretty much doubling his work rate and then some with an additional 89 new dates – 89!
Better yet, a good old chunk of them are in and around Greater Manchester, so if you’re mad for Manford, we’re going to go out on a limb and say you will absolutely be able to grab yourself a ticket.
Jason, 43, will be bringing his ‘A Manford All Seasons’ tour to a laundry list of new locations up and down the country.
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Having already booked in a whopping 88 dates before deciding to hit copy and paste, this takes his total 2025 UK tour dates to a staggering 176 tour dates. Unreal.
Wouldn’t expect anything less than from a Northern lad putting the graft in, though, would you?
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The now Stockport-based showman’s latest comedy offering has had a warm reception from fans and critics, with The Guardian hailing it as “expert observational comedy” and the Daily Telegraph applauding his “laid-back charm and sharp turn of phrase you can’t manufacture”.
Manford has had standing ovations most nights and as for the Manc funny man himself, Jason said: “I’m absolutely blown away by the response to this tour so far. I love touring and bringing some chuckles in these difficult times and so adding these dates means I can see even more of you all over the country.”
Having amassed a following through various projects on stage and screen, be it stand-up, acting, presenting, panel shows and even singing, he’s not only a household name but a pretty family-friendly one at that – a bonus that can go a long way with audiences.
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I’m so pleased the ‘£15 for a single seat’ promotion is working! Come by yourself and have a chuckle https://t.co/BDy3xczF5T
Adding dates at the Stockport Plaza, Middleton Arena, The Albert Halls in Bolton; The Storyhouse in Chester, Parr Hall in Warrington, The Opera House in Buxton (let me catch my breath) and literally dozens more reaching far beyond the North West, he’s going to a busy man next year.
Oh, and there’s a big Co-op Live Arena gig thrown in there on 24 October 2025 too.
Put it this way, if you live in a place, he’s most likely coming somewhere near your direction.
Tickets go on sale this Friday, 29 November at 10am. You can get ready to grab yours HERE.
Sir Ian McKellen pays emotional tribute to long-time friend and fellow northern actor Sir Patrick Stewart
Emily Sergeant
Sir Ian McKellen has paid an emotional tribute to his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Patrick Stewart, following his death.
Sir Patrick Stewart – who was born and bred in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, and is best-known for his theatre work alongside an illustrious 60-year screen career, taking on prominent roles in franchises such as Star Trek and X-Men – sadly passed away at the age of 86, with his death being announced publicly yesterday evening (29 October).
And now, his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Ian McKellen, has paid tribute.
Sir Patrick and Sir Ian shared the stage together countless times over their decades-long careers, but also famously starred alongside each other in the X-Men franchise, and subsequent Marvel movies, as Charles Xavier/Professor X and Magneto.
The tribute, shared across Sir Ian’s social media platforms, reads: “Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions.
“My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in ‘Star Trek’. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”
“Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did, for not just his devoted Trekkies, but film and theatre audiences who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (‘X-Men’ of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.
“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin.
“But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.”
Sir Patrick Stewart’s farewell performance will be in Avengers: Doomsday, which is being released in UK cinemas on 18 December 2026
Featured Image – Gage Skidmore (via Flickr)
TV & Showbiz
James Acaster reveals eerie song all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable
Emily Sergeant
James Acaster has revealed the eerie (and pretty surprising) song that all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable.
In case you’ve been living comfortably under a rock, you’ll probably be aware that comedian James Acaster is currently a contestant on this current season of BBC‘s smash-hit reality TV competition show, The Celebrity Traitors – a show that viewers in their millions are tuning into each week, with some big names on the cast.
Acaster is currently (spoiler alert… but it shouldn’t be at this point, we are several weeks in after all) one of three Traitors competing on the show, and he’s doing a pretty good job at it.
But we wonder how much of his success can be put down to the producers’ love of a certain song they like to play before every roundtable? Probably next to none, but it’s surprising to find out how much of an integral role the tune plays though.
The song we’re referring to here, it has been revealed, is ‘The Hanging Tree’ – a folk ballad made popular by The Hunger Games.
‘The Hanging Tree’, composed by James Newton Howard and Suzanne Collins, was famously sung by Jennifer Lawrence’s character Katniss Everdeen in the third instalment of the film franchise, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.
The lyrics are as follows:
Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where they strung up a man They say who murdered three? Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree
So, as you can see, the song does make reference to ‘murder’, which is a key part of The Traitors game (not real murder, of course), but even with that context, we’re still not sure why the producers are keen to play it out before every roundtable.
During a viral TikTok clip from an on-stage Q&A this week, Acaster revealed the song’s usage to the audience: “You all walk in silence down the corridor, and you all sit down, and they don’t announce it’s gonna happen.
“The first time this will completely blindside you, but they do it every single roundtable. They play that song from The Hunger Games, that ‘coming to the tree’ song. Like acapella, Jennifer Lawrence.”
He continued: “It was every f***ing time, it was the only song we heard the whole time we were in there, and all day I would have it in my head constantly, everyone would, I’d go ‘have you got coming to the tree in your head?’ and they’d go ‘yes, it’s in my head, again’.”
Viewers who watch the show may have spotted the song being played in the background or transition between certain scenes, but now it’s been revealed that the contestants hear it too.
Who would’ve thought?
Featured Image – Euan Cherry / BBC / Studio Lambert
Danny Jones -
26th November 2024 
